Bathrooms

It just occurred to me that next year I will have, for the first time in my life, my own bathroom.

It's such a foreign concept to me that I can't even imagine what it will be like. A lot of responsibility, I imagine. I mean, every time the toilet paper runs out, I'll have to be the one to refill it.

My whole life until this year I've shared a bathroom with my older brother and it has always been the bane of my existence. Anytime someone marveled at how lucky I was to have Austin as my older brother, I advised them to try sharing a bathroom with him. Or when people bemoaned the shaving of his beard, I told them they could come see the beard on our bathroom counter for the next few months.

I have always been assigned responsibility for cleaning the bathroom. This is something I never understood because the biggest task was always picking his whiskers off of the counter and sink. If the biggest mess was his, why did I have to clean the bathroom?

This year, I've almost felt that I have a bathroom all to myself simply because it's clean and nice and I don't have to do anything. I share with my two suitemates and we have a housekeeper who cleans it twice a week.

The actual time restraints on sharing a bathroom have rarely ever gotten to me (even back home with my brother). Except for sharing one bathroom with a dozen and a half people (the typical case when I'm with my mother's side of the family), I've never really had any qualms with waiting to wash up.

So I'm having trouble envisioning what it will be like to have my own bathroom. I can take as long of a shower as I want, I expect. And I'll finally be able to put all of my hair and make up things in the bathroom. Never wanting to be forbidden access if someone is taking a shower when I need to get ready, I've always done my hair/make up in my room. That will definitely be a big change.

Maybe the bathroom is one of the strongest markers of independence for me. Next year, I will have my own room and bathroom and share a living room and kitchenette with a roommate. I've always had my own room and always shared a living room so, even though I'm excited about decorating those in a more adult fashion as if it were a real apartment, the bathroom is newest experience for me. I'll get to arrange it however I want and, for the first time, know that I'm only cleaning my own mess --- not anyone else's.